Diagnosis: Small-sized Asaccus species; postmental separate, dorsal scales smooth, tubercles not keeled, smaller than half diameter of ear opening, lamellae equal in size to the ear opening. Nine very faint dark bars on the tail and 6 dorsal blotches. No cloacal sacs. Body rather slender. Asaccus saffinae sp. n. differs in shape and morphology from all other members of the genus. It is somewhat close to A. kermanshahensis Rastegar-Pouyani, 1996, but differs from it by having a faint dark ring on the tail and by the size of the diameter of the tubercle (less than half diameter of ear in A. saffinae), whilst in A. kermanshahensis there is no dark ring, and the tubercle is 3/4 of ear opening; and also by the separation of anterior postmental in A. saffinae sp. n. which is not seen in A. kermanshahensis.

Comment

Synonymy: TORKI et al. (2011) “can not find any differences between A. saffinae and the Iranian A. griseonotus, so A. saffinae is a synonym for A. griseonotus”.

Abundance: only known from its original description (Meiri et al. 2017).

Etymology

References

Afrasiab, Saman R. and Sarbaz I. Mohamad 2009. A study on cave-dwelling geckos in Iraq, with the description of a new species from Saffine mountain (Reptilia: Gekkonidae). Zoology in the Middle East 47:49-56 - get paper here